Unexpectedly Speaking Your Truth

Every once in a great while, I’ll say something that sticks with me. It can be an everyday conversation that is literally one in one thousand. It wasn’t even a fully formed thought when it left my mouth but somehow I (almost) accidentally spoke my truth.

Does that happen to you?

The Living Room

Three years ago today I had a quiet evening of drinking wine and writing post cards in a warm hotel lobby. My mom and I were on our tour of the UK. She had gone to bed and that lobby was my happy place. Even before two glasses of excellent wine.

“I”m having one of those reflective moments. Life is what you make of it. With intentionality, good decisions, and some work, the good stuff in life is your for the taking (despite the bumps). Or maybe it’s just the room talking. This hotel lobby (not my photo) is the quaintest place ever, Or maybe it’s just good wine.”

The “I want to live abroad” trip I’m currently on was a dim idea in the back of my head when I wrote this three years ago. It was the attitude expressed in that post that got me where I am today.

My kitchen also just happens to be this color of green now….

The Ladder

Like everyone I know, I have struggled with figuring out what I want to do for a living. I have been very lucky to have spent a decade working for two worthy non-profits. I’ve had amazing leadership and passion modeled by Ann, Heather, Shawn, Lewis. and many others. But I’m still trying to figure it all out.*

Trying to decide my career future in a mundane conversation at the end of a normal day, I said to Daniel “I don’t care about climbing the ladder. I don’t want to even be on the ladder.”

It was a second half of that statement that was an unexpectedly deep truth for me. “I don’t even want to be on the ladder.” Maybe that means I’m an entrepreneur at heart. Maybe it means I want to stay on the front lines working directly with clients and customers. Maybe it means I haven’t found the right ladder yet. Maybe it simply means I had a shitty day at work.

Whatever it ends up meaning in the long run, it’s real self-knowledge that I will not let go of.

At least for me, speaking my truth doesn’t always feel courageous. Sometimes it just falls out of my mouth (or fingers, as it were). Where I do need courage is sticking to it once I know what my truth or my desired reality is.

*I suspect that when I’m done with “trying to figure it all out” I’ll be dead. I’m fine with that. Hell, I’m excited by that. Life is a journey, etc.